


hold onto your breath

by foxglovebrew



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Haircuts, M/M, Reunions, Season 3 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 15:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11763300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxglovebrew/pseuds/foxglovebrew
Summary: “Keith,” Shiro says. His hair is dry now, thick and shiny and free of tangles. It runs through Keith’s fingers, easy as anything.“You know, you don’t look half bad with long hair.”





	hold onto your breath

**Author's Note:**

> _Hold onto your voice. Hold onto your breath. Don’t make a noise, don’t leave the room until I come back from the dead for you. I will come back from the dead for you._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> (Richard Siken, ‘You Are Jeff’)

Finding Shiro is different this time. Last time, Keith had raged alone for months. He hadn’t thought he’d ever see Shiro again. In hindsight, the search for the Blue Lion had been the thing to pull him through it — that single-minded obsession that was only _just_ strong enough to keep him from thinking about Shiro.

Sometimes.

This time, it hasn’t been whole year. Keith hasn’t grieved alone, got himself kicked out of the Garrison, stalked the desert after a pipe dream.

He hasn’t been looking for Blue, he’s been looking for _Shiro._

_You came back from the dead for me once._

Last time, in seeing Shiro again — strapped to that table at the Garrison, forever changed — he’d realized that a part of him had _never_ truly believed that Shiro could be dead.

_Please, come back from the dead for me again._

This time, he realizes that a small, hidden part of him had truly believed that Shiro _was_ dead.

Or maybe he’d just feared it. That’s it. Just the overwhelming fear of being left alone again.

The Black Lion croons in the space in the back of his head where Red used to rumble. She’s telling him he is _not_ going to be alone, _never_ going to be alone.

He tries his best not to give into the urge to shut her out. He needs her, and it’s not her fault. It’s not her fault that Shiro disappeared, and it’s not her fault that there’s a war on. It’s not her fault that he’s not made to lead anybody, and it’s not her fault that she’s _not Red_.

But it _is_ because of her that he’s breaking into the small, half-dead shuttle, finding Shiro slumped in the pilot’s seat.

The state of him makes Keith’s skin crawl, and this, at least, is just the same as last time. The rage-red, fear-stained thought ringing in his head: _What have they done to him?_

“Shiro?”

Shiro’s breaths are ragged at first, the heaving of a man starved for air. He still finds enough space between gasps to give Keith’s name back to him.

“I’m here,” Keith says.

Shiro’s eyes are wide, grey, and hungry. Like he’s been wishing for Keith as hard as Keith’s been wishing back. Like taking his eyes off of Keith’s face will mean losing him.

Okay, maybe he’s projecting a little.

There are two things he wants to do. The first is to hold Shiro, tight enough that no Goddamn space magic can ever take him again. The second is to check him over everywhere for injuries, carry him bodily into the Castle, and shove him into a cryopod.

He takes the middle road — whoever said he couldn’t compromise?

Keith’s hand reaches out, slips around the back of Shiro’s neck, pulling him close. Shiro bridges the gap, slumping against Keith and letting out a long, weary sigh. Their foreheads press together.

“Are you hurt?” Keith asks.

“Leg,” Shiro says. “Oxygen was running out.”        

“Did you have food? Water?”

A hum of ‘ _no’_ that squeezes Keith’s insides.

The heat of Shiro’s body seeps into his skin and makes him a little crazy, makes him want to grip harder. _What if he’s dying while you’re here holding him like a lovesick idiot?_

Get it together.

“Can you stand? We need to get you to cryo.”

Shiro goes stiff, underneath his hands. He rasps, “No.”

“Yes, baby.”

That makes Shiro look up, through the fringe of shaggy hair. _Baby_ is Shiro’s prerogative. Endearments are generally Shiro’s thing. Keith uses them so rarely that when he does Shiro _must_ take notice. And even if he knows Keith uses them strategically to get his way, to exploit how much Shiro likes it, it doesn’t make it any less effective.

It has the miraculous effect of drawing a wry smile from Shiro’s tired mouth.

“Cheat,” he says.

Hearing the fond, amused tone makes Keith’s chest expand. The first full breath in a while.

“Yeah, well, gotta get my way somehow,” Keith says. Smiles back. “Besides, you don’t exactly smell like roses.”

Shiro huffs, very close to his mouth.

He can hear steps behind him, the team bickering for who gets to rush into the shuttle first. It’s too small to fit them all, Allura argues.

“Send Hunk!” Keith yells through the open hatch. “Gonna need a little help getting Shiro out.”

Hunk fills the space with his yellow suit and wobbly smile. Keith has to leave Shiro and squeeze past to let Hunk through.

Hunk’s voice shakes on his relieved, “Hey, man. Gave us a scare. Rude.”

“Sorry,” Shiro says, already being lifted and supported. “Group hugs … later?”

“Don’t think you’re getting out of it, though!”

*

The cryo leaves Shiro shaky on his knees with that faraway, blank look on his face. The one he used to get sometimes when he’d just come back, last time. Keith doesn’t ask about small spaces and alien technology.

He herds Shiro into the shower instead. It’s a slow process, gentle and undemanding. Keith takes the chance to clean himself up as well and makes sure Shiro doesn’t slip, but it’s not until later — Shiro in a soft tee and jammers, tucked into his bunk — that Keith takes a good look at Shiro’s hair.

“Keith,” Shiro says. His hair is dry now, thick and shiny and free of tangles. It runs through Keith’s fingers, easy as anything.

“You know, you don’t look half bad with long hair.”

Shiro hums, and the corner of his mouth twitches. Half his face is hidden, pressed into the pillow. Keith is perched at the edge of Shiro’s bed, unable to stop touching him.

“Keith,” Shiro says.

“Yeah?”

Shiro mumbles something else, half-hidden in the pillow.

“What?” Keith says. “Shiro, what?”

Shiro turns, his mouth free of the pillow, eyes open and half-lidded, looking up at Keith. He looks sheepish, almost embarrassed. Not enough to overpower the strange edge of desperation in his eyes that makes Keith’s hand tighten in his hair.

“You haven’t kissed me,” Shiro says. His voice is so quiet.

Keith’s breath leaves him.

There aren’t enough metaphors of crushing weights, and gaping wounds, and hollow emptiness to describe exactly what he’s feeling but — his eyes get warm, and he knows he’s gonna cry, so he kisses Shiro instead.

Warm, chapped lips and Shiro’s hand holding the back of his neck. Keith’s hand in Shiro’s hair, stubble rasping against Keith’s chin, the briefest hint of wet tongue. The small sound Keith makes into the kiss.

It’s brief, and yet it makes every muscle in Keith’s body melt.

“You’re here,” he says.

Shiro is looking at him, dark eyes shining in the low light. “Am I?”

“Oh, baby,” Keith says. “Yes, you are.”

Shiro closes his eyes, lets go of Keith’s neck, and says, “Okay.”

*

“Babe, come on. You got this.”

Keith twists his mouth. Shiro sits in front of him on the floor, back to him, shoulders snug between Keith’s legs.

“How do you know?”

Keith sounds petulant to his own ears. He’s fidgeting with the scissors and absolutely putting off hacking into the fall of Shiro’s hair.

“You’ve done my undercut before.”

“This is _so_ not the same thing,” Keith replies, and knocks into Shiro’s hip with his foot “There’s a reason why you always trim the front yourself!”

“Yeah, because I can _see_ that, and it takes five minutes.”

Hearing Shiro like this, a little peeved, under the exhaustion — younger, almost, like he used to bicker with Keith at the Garrison — lifts a little of the weight in Keith’s chest. He might be playing up his reluctance a little. Only a little.

Shiro cheats — he leans his forehead against Keith’s knee, nosing at the crease there.

“I want _you_ to do it,” he says. “I trust you.”

Some day, Keith is going to think about how dangerous it is — that he would do almost anything if Shiro asked.

The Black Lion is somewhere at the edge of his consciousness, but he’s been keeping her at arm’s length since the day they found Shiro. Part of him, maybe, doesn’t want her to know that if it came to a choice between Black and Shiro, Shiro would always win.

And besides — this is progress. Shiro is joking around, wanting his hair cut so he can join the others on the bridge, smelling sweetly of aftershave, his cheeks smooth enough Keith wants to bite into them.

He got a little of his biting in earlier and left a red mark only just below the collar of Shiro’s shirt. He’d been looking forward to the possibility of Shiro tying up his hair, though he’d been missing the rasp of Shiro’s undercut under his hands when they kissed.

_Be careful what you wish for._

Keith takes a deep breath, then pulls Shiro in by the ear, making him squawk. He plants a kiss at his hairline, and tangles his fingers in the thick hair at the base of Shiro’s neck.

“Okay,” he says. “But if it looks like shit, remember that I warned you.”

He can tell Shiro is smiling by the way he says, “Okay.”

He does make Shiro sweat first. He ties up his hair in a ponytail. Or several, at different heights. Shiro’s eyebrow twitches a couple of times, but there’s that smile at the corner of his mouth again, like everything could feasibly go back to normal. Keith tries a bun, which really makes him question whether Shiro should chop off his hair in the first place. It’s … a good look, for sure.

“Keith. Enough,” Shiro says, pinching his calf.

Keith pulls Shiro’s hair one last time, then ties it up in one last ponytail. And, finally, gives him the chop.

*

Shiro stands in front of the mirror in the bathroom. His fingers keep scratching at the back of his head, feeling the bristles there again. Uselessly trying to pick up bits of fallen hair that are making his neck itchy.

Keith has his face in his hands. _What has he done?_

“I told you,” Keith moans against his own fingers. “ _I fucking told you.”_

“Okay,” Shiro says. “Well.”

He doesn’t seem to know how to continue the sentence.

The hair is bad.

It’s _really_ bad.

Keith will forever be the man who managed to make Takashi Shirogane _less hot_ where even the Galra, and a trek across an icy wasteland, and seven days in an abandoned shuttle had failed.

Shiro stares at himself for a beat longer, at the too-short, unruly tuft of white hair that falls gracelessly on his forehead. Nothing like the good bangs he used to have.

He turns towards Keith and says, “Do you really think I’m less hot like this?”

Which is when Keith realizes he’s been broadcasting his train of thought out loud.

There’s an odd mix of self-deprecation, amusement, and genuine distress on Shiro’s face. There are still shadows under his eyes from — well, everything. God. Shiro really didn’t need _this_ from _Keith._

“Well,” Keith says. “I’m in love with you, so I think I get a pass for still thinking you’re hot.”

Some of the tightness goes out of Shiro’s eyes, and he reaches out a hand to Keith.

Keith meets him, though his free hand immediately goes to mess with the white bangs, trying to find a way to make them lie more flatteringly. Useless.

“You kind of have to,” Shiro says. A little playful. “Since you did this.”

Keith glares up at him and is met only with Shiro’s peaceful, innocent, absolutely _fake_ expression. He’s _this close_ to snapping, _You fucking asked!_

“Well,” Keith says instead. He squares up his shoulders, and holds Shiro’s face in his hands for a long moment, frowning. “That’ll grow out eventually.”

“I guess it will.”

Shiro’s smiling. Shiro’s smiling through the horrible, terrible haircut, and the wild, exhausted look in his eyes. He’s smiling and bending down to kiss Keith with that beloved, warm mouth. Smooth cheeks underneath Keith’s hands. Big hands on his arms.

Keith hums, pulling away, helpless not to suck in his own lower lip to keep the taste there.

“ _Now_ ,” Keith says. “Go take a shower. I know those stray hairs on your neck are driving you insane.”

*

When Keith strides onto the bridge not long after, the other Paladins turn to look at him, obviously expecting an update on Shiro’s status.

“Do not say a Goddamn thing about the haircut,” Keith says.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in a rush within 24 hours of the airing of s3. It took significantly longer to have it edited (a shoutout to my betas, who killed my excessive commas with extreme prejudice - you're invaluable) and posted, because life happens.
> 
> Anyway, this is entirely self-indulgent, because I needed three things: 1) a reunion that didn't involve clone drama 2) something that wasn't _complete_ angst 3) Keith cutting Shiro's hair.
> 
> It was written with the intention that Shiro is Shiro, and not a clone. _However_ if you prefer to read it otherwise that's also cool (there _are_ some lines in there that I wrote with the full knowledge that they would hurt like a mother if you read it as 'Shiro is a clone' ... so be my guest!) 
> 
> (If anybody needs it spelled out, Keith is 19 and Shiro is 26 in this.)
> 
> Much love.


End file.
